NicanNov 24, 2024

@niloc132 Hey. I used to do GWT development back in 2013.

https://github.com/Nican/wpischeduler

I noticed that you seem to actively be developing GWT, and I am kind of curious that it is still being used. How is it still going? Any big projects still using it?

GitHub - Nican/wpischeduler: WPI Scheduler

WPI Scheduler . Contribute to Nican/wpischeduler development by creating an account on GitHub.

GitHub
Show threadColin AlworthNov 24, 2024
@nican Google internally still uses the idea of it, but has a new compiler called j2cl that better fits with bazel/blaze. Outside of Google there are many “legacy” (i.e. still profitable and not actually needing a rewrite every N years) apps that use it, usually on the order of 100k-10m lines of code. Most of the projects that use it are b2b or internal only, so they don’t get a ton of publicity, but they do keep chugging on.
Show threadColin AlworthNov 24, 2024
@nican Typescript has filled the niche of “compile real typed code to js”, but that ecosystem has totally neglected the “okay you’ve got great type info, use that to produce optimized output” stages - tree shaking is a thing, and minification too, but that’s just a shallow dip into that world. Java as a language doesn’t move as fast as TS, but it also doesn’t break any existing code as it does move, so there’s that.
Show threadColin Alworth
@nican Back in the world where you wrote the code that you ran and usually even shipped it to prod, GWT seemed like a weird tool, but today when most popular tools insist on a build step to even develop… it seems more like the world has come closer to GWT rather than moving further away.
Nov 24, 2024 at 4:09pmWeb
Show threadNicanNov 24, 2024

@niloc132 interesting to hear.

I should mention, my project is still alive. Generations of students have updated the project year after year: https://planner.wpi.edu/

I still find it amazing that it is working as intended. I love strongly typed projects that lives for so long.

I sometimes still work with Typescript, with a relatively overbearing linter, and type problems still leak into the code.

WPI Planner

Show threadColin AlworthNov 24, 2024
@nican I first learned Java on a vaguely similar project - rarely updated, but that’s not much of a requirement for learning the basics of data structures and the like. Normally as a GWT advocate I’d say update right away! But no one is going to pick up this project and base their real life work on it.
Show threadColin AlworthNov 24, 2024
@nican I worry that typescript is too clever in places but also not foolproof enough - generics seem to have learned little from Java’s mistakes/ with arrays (handled in generics) last century. Plus being “by design” incapable of checking runtime type issues.